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What are the 'human givens'?

We are all born with innate knowledge programmed into us from our genes. Throughout life we experience this knowledge as feelings of physical and emotional need.

These feelings evolved over millions of years and, whatever our cultural background, are our common biological inheritance. They are the driving force that motivates us to become fully human and succeed in whatever environment we find ourselves in.

It is because these psychological needs are incorporated into our biology at conception that we call them – and the innate resources we have in order to help us meet them – human 'givens' – they are the givens and drivers of human nature.

Our given physical needs

As animals we are born into a material world where we need air to breathe, water, nutritious food and sufficient sleep. These are the paramount physical needs. Without them, we quickly die. In addition we also need the freedom to stimulate our senses and exercise our muscles. We instinctively seek sufficient and secure shelter where we can grow and reproduce ourselves and bring up our young. These physical needs are intimately bound up with our emotional needs — the main focus of human givens psychology.

Our given psychological needs

Emotions create distinctive psychobiological states in us and drive us to take action. The emotional needs nature has programmed us with are there to connect us to the external world, particularly to other people, and survive in it. They seek their fulfillment through the way we interact with the environment.

Consequently, when our human needs are not met in the world, nature ensures we suffer considerable distress — anxiety, anger, depression etc. — and our expression of distress, in whatever form it takes, impacts on those around us.

People whose emotional needs are met in a balanced way do not suffer mental health problems. When psychotherapists and teachers pay attention to this they are at their most effective.

In short, it is by meeting our physical and emotional needs that we survive and develop as individuals and a species.

There is widespread agreement as to the nature of our emotional needs – the essential ones for our mental health are listed below.

Emotional needs include:

Security — safe territory and an environment which allows us to develop fully

Attention (to give and receive it) — a form of nutrition

Sense of autonomy and control — having volition to make responsible choices

Emotional intimacy — to know that at least one other person accepts us totally for who we are, “warts 'n' all”

Feeling part of a wider community

Privacy — opportunity to reflect and consolidate experience

Sense of status within social groupings

Sense of competence and achievement

Meaning and purpose — which come from being stretched in what we do and think.

Our innate resources

The physical and emotional needs that we have are not the only human givens – nature also gave us innate 'guidance systems' to help us meet our needs. We call these 'resources'.

The resources nature gave us to help us meet our human needs include:

The ability to develop complex long term memory, which enables us to add to our innate knowledge and learn

The ability to build rapport, empathise and connect with others

Imagination, which enables us to focus our attention away from our emotions, use language and problem solve more creatively and objectively

Emotions and instincts

A conscious, rational mind that can check out our emotions, question, analyse and plan

The ability to 'know' — that is, understand the world unconsciously through metaphorical pattern matching

An observing self — that part of us that can step back, be more objective and be aware of itself as a unique centre of awareness, apart from intellect, emotion and conditioning

A dreaming brain that preserves the integrity of our genetic inheritance every night by metaphorically defusing expectations held in the autonomic arousal system because they were not acted out the previous day.

It is such needs and tools together that make up the human givens, nature's genetic endowment to humanity.

Over enormous stretches of time, they underwent continuous refinement as they drove our evolution on. They are best thought of as inbuilt patterns — biological templates — that continually interact with one another and (in undamaged people) seek their natural fulfilment in the world in ways that allow us to survive, live together as many-faceted individuals in a great variety of different social groupings, and flourish.

It is the way those needs are met, and the way we use the resources that nature has given us, that determine the physical, mental and moral health of an individual.

When we feel emotionally fulfilled and are operating effectively within society, we are more likely to be mentally healthy and stable. But when too many innate physical and emotional needs are not being met in the environment, or when our resources are used incorrectly, unwittingly or otherwise, we suffer considerable distress – and so do those around us.

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